Apply Yourself to the Study of Scripture

My son, diligently apply yourself to the reading of the sacred Scriptures.  Apply yourself, I say.  For we who read the things of God need much application, lest we should say or think anything too rashly about them.  And applying yourself in this way to the study of the things of God, with faithful intentions that are well-pleasing to God, knock at its locked door, and it will be opened to you by the doorkeeper, of whom Jesus says, “To him the doorkeeper opens.”*  And applying yourself to the divine study, seek aright, and with unwavering trust in God, the meaning of the holy Scriptures, which so many have missed.  Do not be satisfied with knocking and seeking; for prayer is of all things indispensable to the knowledge of the things of God.  For to this the Savior exhorted, and said not only, “Knock, and it shall be opened to you; and seek, and you shall find,”† but also, “Ask, and it shall be given unto you.”‡  My fatherly love to you has made me thus bold; but whether my boldness be good, God will know, and His Christ, and all partakers of the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ.  May you also be a partaker, and be ever increasing your inheritance, that you may say not only, “We are partakers of Christ,”§ but also partakers of God.

Origen, Letter to Gregory Thaumaturgus 3

*  An allusion to John 10:3
†  Matthew 7:7
‡  Luke 11:9
§  Hebrews 3:14